


After All

by Luthe



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Gen, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:35:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthe/pseuds/Luthe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It always comes back to the Skywalkers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After All

_Go ahead, push your luck  
Find out how much love the world can hold_

One of the things that no one really noticed, and yet everyone knew, was how lovable Anakin was. He was impulsive, impetuous, pert, moody, and a general hazard to life and sanity, and yet, people liked him. There was just something there that compelled love. Obi-Wan speculated that it was the innocence with which Anakin did most things, for he was rarely *calculatingly* problematic, tending more to accidental mayhem caused by a lack of thought. It drove Obi-Wan to distraction, but at the same time, he could not deny that he, like everyone else the boy ever met, liked Anakin.

Even the Council, for all their stuffiness and reserve, had some affection for the wayward Padawan. He was entertaining, if nothing else, and even Master Yoda had been known to smile from time to time at the latest scrape Anakin had found himself in.

He was their mascot, their hero, and their greatest failure, and still, they could not help but love Anakin. He demanded it.

_Once upon a time I had control  
And reined my soul in tight_

She had spent years learning to control herself, because as Queen and a Senator could not let her true feelings show. So it was surprising, and annoying, how easily Anakin could provoke a reaction from her. She didn’t want to like him, and she swore she didn’t, because he was arrogant and powerful and woefully misguided, but at the same time, he made her feel.

  
It discomfited her. She was supposed to be a politician. She was supposed to have control. And yet, she was still falling in love with him.

_Well the whole truth  
Is like the story of a wave unfurled_

Obi-Wan had decided early on not to tell Luke the entire story of his father’s fall. It would be too hard on the boy, he thought, to know that his father had risen to the greatest heights of the Jedi, only to fall so stunningly to the Dark Side. How would Luke understand the rage and hatred that had blinded his father, the lust for power that had robbed him of everything, including finally his humanity? He wouldn’t. He would only hear what he wanted to, and he would run to the evil creature that his father now was, feeling a misplaced loyalty and a desire for affection that would be easily twisted into Darkness. So Obi-Wan held back, telling Luke the truth in bits and pieces, not letting the whole story free until he had to.

 _But I held the evil of the world_  
_So I stopped the tide_  
_Froze it up from inside_

From the moment he returned to the Temple after Genosis, he knew he was different from the other Jedi. They seemed so serene to him, so untouched by the world, while he knew sorrow and rage and suffering. They were all so *innocent*, and it sickened him a little. They knew nothing, and he knew everything. Despite this, he knew he could not let his contempt or his anger show. He was a Jedi, and Jedi were serene and untroubled. They did not give into their anger, no matter how much a situation warranted it. And so he locked the pain and the power away, storing it for when he needed it. Because no matter what the Jedi said, he knew he would need it. He had seen the true nature of the world, and darkness dwelt there, waiting to be fought with darkness.

 _And it felt like a winter machine_  
_That you go through and then_  
_You catch your breath and winter starts again_

There is something subtly wrong and yet subtly right about having a machine breathe for him. It could be that he associates breathing with meditating, that hated exercise that Obi-Wan forced on him so long ago. “Focus on your breathing, Padawan,” he would say, “Let the Force flow through you like air.” He would try, but eventually he would become distracted and lose concentration, letting his thoughts wander from the air passing in and out of his lungs.

Now, though, he cannot forget. Every breath is carefully measured and controlled, and the sound exists forever on the edge of his consciousness. In time, he may cease to notice it, but for now, he is always reminded of his breathing, and the dark power of the Force flowing through him like air through his mechanical lungs.

_And everyone else is spring bound_

Obi-Wan knew that it would be a long dark time in the galaxy before the twins were grown. Still, he knew he must wait it out with patience of a Jedi, because he could not act against the power of the Sith alone. There were only two Jedi left in the galaxy, and the Sith had ascendance. Darkness was to be expected, at least for now.

He would wait. Because even as the Darkness flourished, there were two seeds of hope for the future slowly growing, waiting to bring the Light back.

_And when I chose to live  
There was no joy, it's just a line I crossed_

There had been a moment, in the fire, when he had thought about giving up the struggle and letting the lava consume him fully. It would have been a quick death he thought, instead of a life filled with pain. Instead, he had fought and scrabbled, holding on long enough that his Master could rescue him and bring him back to life.

When he thought later about why he had chosen a half-life over a swift death, the answer always came back the same: his anger would not let him. He would live to punish Kenobi and the rest of the Order that had betrayed him. He would be the last of them to live, and he would show them how wrong they were, how weak and foolish they had been for not embracing the darkness. The darkness is why he lived. The light would have had him dead long ago.

It never occurred to him that death would have released him back to the arms of his angel.

_It wasn't worth the pain my death would cost  
So I was not lost or found_

Luke Skywalker was supposed to have died many times over at the hand of Darth Vader. The Emperor had ordered the pilot who had destroyed the Death Star executed. Of course, the Emperor was ignorant of the pilot’s name, a fact that Vader exploited. He worked constantly to find the nameless rebel, only to have him inexplicably escape at the last moment. Vader’s hand was always stayed by something, something he claimed was the desire to capture the boy alive and twist him to his own ends, but was really something else. He would never admit it, but it was the small weakness in him that answered to the name Anakin Skywalker.

And so it was that Luke continued to live, always one step ahead Darth Vader, protected by the goodwill of a man who barely existed any more.

_And if I was to sleep  
I knew my family had more truth to tell_

Luke sometimes dreamed of his father. Proud and strong and cocky, he was a great warrior and a true friend, standing by a younger Obi-Wan with a rakish smile on his face. Luke would watch his father use his lightsaber -the lightsaber Luke himself could barely handle- with ease, deflecting blaster bolts and cutting down enemies. A great Jedi, Ben had said, and Luke believed it.

Sometimes, though, his dreams would become nightmares. Darth Vader would appear and kill Luke’s father with one blow, and then he would stand over Luke, looking at him as if he held the secrets of the Universe. Luke always woke from those dreams slightly disconcerted, as if there was a puzzle he was supposed to be solving that he didn’t have all the pieces to. It worried him a little.

_And so I traveled down a whispering well  
To know myself through them_

Even as he fell through the howling winds of Cloud City, Luke knew he couldn’t escape the truth, no matter how hard he ran. He was Darth Vader’s son, and there was some of that darkness in him. It had called to him, when Vader had extended his hand, whispering of power and control. Luke had jumped to escape that call, only to find there was no escape. There was only himself, and the shadow of his father on his soul. The darkness would always be with him, because it was him.

He kept falling, the darkness whispering to him on the wind.

_Growing up, my mom had a room full of books  
And hid away in there_

When Leia was young, she would spend all of her time in the library, reading about her real mother. There were few records remaining from the last days of the Old Republic, and no holos, so Leia was forced to tell herself stories about what Padmé Amidala was like. Leia always imagined a bold warrior Queen, striding into the Senate and demanding help for her people before returning to Naboo at the head of an army and charging into battle. She never imagined a scared fourteen year-old girl bluffing her way into an alliance, or a nine-year old boy accidentally stopping a battle, or two Jedi facing a Sith.

When it came to imagining her father, she always thought of a wise and clever man, just the perfect match for a Queen and Senator, who was happy to help her do her job. He was patient, and kind, and knew everything there was to know. In fact, the father she imagined was a lot like her adopted father.

Eventually, someone always came to find her, but before they did, Leia would have a little time with her family.

 _Her father raging down a spiral stair_  
_Till he found someone_  
_Most days his son_

He had not been angry with the boy, not at least until the boy had struck him. Only then was he angry, because the blow was so similar to a blow that had been struck long ago, a blow that started his journey from beautiful youth to grotesque machine.

He lashed out at the boy, his anger increasing the power of his blows. The boy was driven back, and, in a moment of inattention, he had his revenge. He maimed the boy as he had been maimed. Now he would know what it was to lose flesh, now he would know how it felt to be part machine.

The boy would not strike him in such a way again. The lesson was taught.

_And sometimes I think  
My father, too, was a refugee_

They called him the last of a dying Order, and he knew it was true. Because while he was a Sith, and confident that the Sith would last forever, he also had once been one of the hated Jedi. When he died, the Jedi died with him. Even he could see the tragedy in that. The Jedi may have been weak and misguided, but he had to admire their long tenure in the galaxy, and be thankful to them for the early training that they had given him before he saw the truth of the Dark Side.

So it was that he admitted he was the last of a breed, and that he would be sorry to see it go.

_I know they tried to keep their pain from me  
They could not see what it was for_

Luke knew without having to be told that Obi-Wan and Yoda hated what his father had become. They would never admit to it, of course, but it was clear to him from how they spoke of Darth Vader and the Jedi purges that there was hatred there. The fact that the only path they could see for him was to kill Vader was merely the most obvious sign. Even Jedi had weaknesses, as his father had shown, and so did Obi-Wan and Yoda. They just tried to hide them, because it was not Jedi for them to admit how they felt.

Luke could see their weakness, though. It was good that he did, because in seeing it, he also saw the subtle darkness that it cast on his training. They had tried to prepare him for one thing, and one thing only, and that was patricide. But somehow, he knew if he did as they wanted, he would succumb to the Darkness, too, instead of overcoming it. And so he ignored what they told him, and tried to free himself of the taint of the Dark Side. It was what they would want.

_But now I'm sleeping fine  
Sometimes the truth is like a second chance_

Luke remembers when he used to dream of his father. He knows now that his dreams of his father were right, even the parts with Darth Vader in them. And so now when he dreams of his father, he sees the proud and strong and cocky Jedi that he imagined his father to be wearing Darth Vader’s armor. It’s odd, to say the least, because in his dreams, his father is still a great Jedi. His father loves him in his dreams, and the mask and the armor do nothing to change that.

When he awakens from those dreams, he knows he can’t kill his father. There’s someone who loves Luke in that armor, even if Luke’s only met that person in his dreams.

_I am the daughter of a great romance_

Later, much later, when she thought about it, she realized that her mother must have been a very good and great woman indeed. She had loved the man who was Darth Vader, and loved him freely, for Leia doubted that a Queen and a Senator would have consented to serve as whore or victim to such evil. The idea that her mother had actually loved her father was disturbing, and yet, she had to admit, it was better than the other options. So she continued to believe in the goodness of her mother, even as she reviled her father.

_And they are the children of the war_

If Padmé had known what war would do to her children, she would have wept. She would have cried for every scar gotten from a blaster bolt or a piece of shrapnel, and mourned for every little hardening of their hearts against pain.

The look on Leia’s face when she remembered her tortures at the hands of Darth Vader would have moved Padmé to tears. Luke’s half-unconscious wince when he looked at his mechanical hand would have broken her heart. She had not borne her children to be soldiers in a battle against an enemy she had unwittingly helped to power. She had birthed them to live, and to love, and to have lives of happiness. Not to fight against the man they did not know to be their father.

If Padmé had known, she would have wept. But she did not know, and it made Obi-Wan a little glad to remember that.

_Well the sun rose with so many colors  
It nearly broke my heart_

He didn’t notice the sunrise that morning. It was actually quite pretty, with Tatoo I and II rising gently from the sands, spreading purples and pinks and finally reds before them, but he didn’t care. He was too focused on the pain inside.

He had killed them all, trying to get the pain and the rage out. And it hadn’t helped. He still felt as hurt and lonely as he had before he had killed them. The only difference was that now he knew he was a murderer, just like them. He wasn’t sure which hurt more: the loss of his mother or the loss of his innocence.

_And worked me over like a work of art  
And I was a part of all that_

To your average Naboo, the job of being Queen required that one consent to be a living work of art, a representation of all the beauty of Naboo in human form. Padmé had always believed this, thinking that it was the make-up and the dresses that gave her the beauty that everyone acclaimed. She did not realize how wrong she was until she walked into a junk shop in plain handmaiden’s gear and was pronounced an angel by a slave boy. He saw her as nothing more than Padmé, and called her beautiful, unlike all of those who saw her as the Queen and said the same. It was in that moment that it occurred to her that one did not to be a work of art to be beautiful.

_So go ahead, push your luck  
Say what it is you've got to say to me_

He shouldn’t have let the boy talk. He should have taken him straight to the Emperor, so that they could have begun working to turn him. But instead, he gave the boy a chance to speak to him.

The words weren’t surprising. He had expected the boy would try and convince him to turn back to the Light. In fact, some traitorous part of him had welcomed it, because it meant that someone had faith in him. Still, it was a pointless exercise for them both, and he knew it. He was far too deep in the Darkness to return, and even he did, what was the point? There was no creature in the galaxy that did not see him as evil and wretched. He would be killed on sight if he even tried to surrender, and using his powers to protect himself would be seen as a hostile act.

Really, he shouldn’t have even bothered. The boy would be turned, the Emperor would be killed, and the galaxy would be restored to peace. The boy’s words were meaningless.

He let him speak anyway.

 _We will push on into that mystery_  
_And it'll push right back_  
_And there are worse things than that_

Obi-Wan had known there were worse things than death from the moment he had heard that Anakin had survived the lava. He could not imagine being trapped in the suit his former Padawan wore, confined to a half-life dependent on machines. He especially could not imagine Anakin in such a suit, because Anakin had always been one for physical contact, for communion with the Living Force, for touching and feeling and seeing and living. The thought of anyone living deprived of such things sent a shudder of repulsion deep inside him, and he knew it would have been infinitely better if Anakin had died.

That was one of the reasons why, when Anakin chose to strike him down, he had no fear of death. There were much worse things, and death was nothing but a small mystery.

_'Cause for every price_

This was the price for loving him, she knew. She had always known there *would* be a price, she just hadn’t thought this would be it. But as she stood there, fighting to breathe, her heart broken into as many pieces as there were stars in the galaxy, she realized she should have expected it. Nothing that Anakin had asked of her had ever been easy, and this was no different. The only difference, really, was that this time she couldn’t choose him, because there was no Anakin to choose. There was only a man wearing Anakin’s face, who might still be her husband, but deep inside, far from what she was seeing now.

She knew there would be a price. As the pressure in her throat increased, she knew she was finally paying it.

_And every penance that I could think of_

The suit’s systems were all failing, one by one. It wasn’t as painful as the lava had been, so long ago, but it did hurt. The slow suffocation was the worst, because it made everything just that much slower, and just that much more painful. It wasn’t penance enough, not by a long shot, but it was a something. He wasn’t sure whether to be glad of it or not.

The lightning had hurt, of course, but he had ignored that. All that had mattered then was Luke. Now, though, he had time to appreciate just how much pain he was in.

He could feel the boy’s strength fading. He might as well surrender now, to spare the boy more suffering, even if he did deserve more of the torment that his aching body was giving him. He was sure the Force would find some appropriate way to punish him for his crimes.

“Luke. Help me take this mask off…”

_It's better to have fallen in love_

She didn’t regret it. Even after she had suffered by his hands and had her heart broken by him, she didn’t regret it. She remembered the man she had loved, the man he had been before he chose the wrong path in her name, and she was glad she had loved him. He had made her happy, he had given her children, he had called her angel and saved her life. She didn’t regret loving him, even if it hurt, and she went to her rest with a glad heart.

_Than never to have fallen at all_

He didn’t love the boy. The most he did was covet the boy’s power. He felt nothing beyond that. He couldn’t. It was not the way of the Sith, and it was not the way of Darth Vader. The boy was nothing more than a tool to be used, a servant to be recruited to the Dark Side. He was not a person to be loved, or a reminder of another love, so long ago. He told himself he had never loved her, either, that he had merely used her. That he did not fall in her name, but rather chose the Darkness because of the power it offered.

The lies were cold comfort, but he expected no more. Sith did not need comfort.

_'Cause when you live in a world  
Well, it gets in to who you thought you'd be_

Anakin had always imagined that when he was a great Jedi Knight he would never be hurt or scared or angry, because everyone knew Jedi never were any of those things. He hadn’t expected that Jedi were those things, only deep inside where no one knew about it. He hadn’t thought that it would be so hard to keep his own pain and fear and anger inside, or that it would make him do things the other Jedi wouldn’t approve of. He hadn’t known that there were things that the Jedi wouldn’t tell him, because they thought they were wrong, even if they were things that would dull his pain, make his fear meaningless, and turn his anger to productive ends.

He had been wrong. He shouldn’t have imagined himself a Jedi, he realized. He should have imagined himself a Sith.

_And now I laugh at how the world changed me  
I think life chose me after all_

It wasn’t until after Obi-Wan had welcomed him to the embrace of the Force and he had watched Luke celebrate with his friends that it occurred to him. And when it did, he had to laugh.

He had acted to save Luke, because he loved him, and he had destroyed the Emperor. He had stopped the Dark Side from enshrouding the galaxy forever. He had brought balance. The prophecy was fulfilled. He hadn’t even done it on purpose, but merely had done what he had to, and yet, he was the Chosen One after all.

**Author's Note:**

> So, long ago I swore to myself I would never write songfic, on the grounds that it was the province of teeny-boppers with few brains and large obsessions with boy-bands.
> 
> Unfortunately, I had to break this promise, as a combination of Dar Williams and plot bunnies forced me to renege.


End file.
